Little Crow’s Ear Nettled by the Slash-eyed Journey

I was born to a family wrapped
inside the wallpaper of two worlds,
drumming the other’s disappearance.
My voice grew into an impulse of blood wars red and white.

Running between winter and spring
I awoke to a nightmare of spit and bile.
My grandfather said I must earn my tracks in the night.
The earth surged and oozed

with thunder, hail, and wind snakes
from its icy depths a rebirth;
the dark splintered and barked
the song my life’s a fable,

a crow with toe in mouth,
a child tossed from the nest
clawing for cover like Trickster in diapers.
I watched our home change faces

every eviction and slammed door
more often than an octopus
in the throes of a shape shift.
The walls in our next house

slanted downward with the weight
of bandaged heads reeking of whiskey,
gin, wine and beer, our lives
a steady howling and gnashing at the drain.

As ragged as my boots
I hit the pavement like a clamshell
with the family for the umpteenth fool’s parade.
By age thirteen I could bake bread
from the scorched earth of the weeping knots,
court sorrow like a lover and speak with crickets.

Duane Niatum, “Little Crow’s Ear Nettled by the Slash-eyed Journey” from Earth Vowels. Copyright © 2017 by Duane Niatum. Reprinted by permission of Mongrel Empire Press.

Source: Earth Vowels (Mongrel Empire Press, 2017)